Choosing a Hotel

Posted on 27th Aug 2014

In any area of the country there will be a choice of good 3 or 4 star hotels that will be suitable locations for your team building event. Most hotels will have a conference department and a dedicated team who can offer advice on room layouts and any equipment you need.

There are a few tips that will help you to get the most out of your experience. In an early conversation establish the capacity of the hotel; number of bedrooms and conference rooms. Ask how many conferences will be in the hotel at the same time as you. If they tell you there are three more and it looks as though they have capacity for two more don’t be afraid to ask what they are doing to ensure everything runs smoothly. Weddings can be a particular problem as they are now taking place in the week as well as at weekends; conferences and weddings in the same hotel - what could possibly go wrong?!

If you are having outdoor activities ask to see a map showing you where the activity area is and make sure that it's not too far away if delegates are walking from the hotel to the area.

There are various tricks for checking the culture of costumer service. For example one old technique was to have a message left for yourself at reception if you make a pre-event inspection visit. Whether or not you received your message was an indication of the service levels you could expect. Interesting though that is nowadays we have online reviews that will give you an idea of standards at a glance. A good tip with reviews is to look at the negatives to see if you can spot a theme. However, make sure you take dates into account as management and even ownership can change and that, in turn, can significantly change a hotel, for better or worse.

Don’t necessarily take the hotel recommendation of an event company as based on their opinion of its standards. Event companies and hotels often work in partnership and they will recommend each other. Larger event companies tend to have a more extensive portfolio of partner hotels but may still have an agenda. Don’t be afraid to ask directly; ‘Why are you recommending this particular hotel?’

One of the best ways of choosing a hotel is to ask around for recommendations within your own team. It can be a particularly good strategy to ask senior managers who will be attending the event as they will often have experience of past events.

Organise Events offer a free and, importantly, impartial venue finding service and we will be delighted to help you to make a well informed choice.